China Wants to Regulate Games to Combat Myopia

AlphaAtlas

AlphaAtlas

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China has the largest video game market in the world, but the Chinese Government is clamping down on the booming industry. Just a few weeks ago, the government stopped approving new video game licenses. Yesterday, the Ministry of Education outlined a new set of regulations intended to fight myopia in children and adolescents. While the announcement doesn't elaborate on how video games affect children's eyesight, it does say that regulators want to limit the total number of online games, implement a stronger age restriction system, and and limit the amount of time children spend playing games. Following the announcement, gaming giant Tencent lost billions in market value, and analysts say that the censorship and regulation will continue.

"But in the bigger picture, this is in line with China's policy of putting a stronger clamp on gaming," Leung said, adding that the trend is likely to continue for "at least" the next two quarters.
 
Yet another thing China just doesn't get. Like mental health issues. Yes, it exists China, whether you like it or not.
 
AlphaAtlas said:
China has the largest video game market in the world, but the Chinese Government is clamping down on the booming industry. Just a few weeks ago, the government stopped approving new video game licenses. Yesterday, the Ministry of Education outlined a new set of regulations intended to fight myopia in children and adolescents. While the announcement doesn't elaborate on how video games affect children's eyesight, it does say that regulators want to limit the total number of online games, implement a stronger age restriction system, and and limit the amount of time children spend playing games. Following the announcement, gaming giant Tencent lost billions in market value, and analysts say that the censorship and regulation will continue.

"But in the bigger picture, this is in line with China's policy of putting a stronger clamp on gaming," Leung said, adding that the trend is likely to continue for "at least" the next two quarters.
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Companies will suck a mile long chinese cock for those sales, it doesn't matter if it leads to killing a thousand of their plebs a month. Google is my favorite example of how crappy an American company will be to make a buck there. I guess if you don't care about your freedom why the fuck should we but still don't advertise what a great humanitarian company you are while you have a huge Chinese shlong up your ass.
 
Tencent's stock tanked on this revelation but what I find most interesting is no mention of what is happening at Riot Games (100% owned by Tencent). We have effectively a Chinese-owned gaming company which in its native country has to deal with game-curbing all the while it's creating a new diversity department (seriously - "Chief Diversity Officer"). Okay, that makes perfect sense.
 
China only wants to prevent children from going blind. What a swell bunch of guys they are...
 
That reminds me, did the Google employee protest fizzle? I guess AI for Chinese military is not important than AI for the US military.
 
Must be too many children calling in "sick" recently and the sweatshops are not happy about it.
 
So when does China start regulating the air (smog) for its citizens?
 
Mixed information. The recent headlines strongly declare that there is a myopia epidemic caused by screens but I found a 2015 article that says a 20-year study found no link between screentime and myopia. It may be that cell phones, rather than televisions and traditional computers, are to blame. It could also be earlier exposure and heavier early usage of things like phones and tablets. Or, it could be that kids aren't getting outside and could be just as bad if they would spend all their time indoors reading books.

Telegraph 2015 said:
Watching TV or staring at computer for hours 'does not cause short-sightedness'

Researchers at Ohio State University find no link between bad eyesight and youngsters who spent most time in front of computer or television after 20-year study. They followed 4,500 children between the ages of six and 11 over two decades, monitoring their screen use and testing their eyes.

Although current thinking suggests that staring too long at a screen can cause short-sightedness, or myopia, which has led to the recommendation of screen breaks, the new study found there was no link between bad eyesight and youngsters who spent the most time in front of a computer or TV.

"Near work has been thought to be a cause of myopia, or at least a risk factor, for more than 100 years,” said Karla Zadnik, professor and dean of the College of Optometry at The Ohio State University and lead author of the study.

“In this large dataset from an ethnically representative sample of children, we found no association."

Researchers looked at 13 potential risk factors for myopia to determine the strongest single predictor that could identify those children most likely to become short-sighted. They discovered that the biggest predictor was the level of refractive error in the eye at the age of six.

In people with normal vision, the eyeball grows along with the rest of the body and is programmed to stop growing at a point that sustains clear vision. In people with myopia, the typically spherical eyeball becomes elongated, resembling the shape of a grape or an olive. The onset of short-sightedness generally occurs in childhood and about one in three adults has the condition, which means distant objects are out of focus.

"If you become near-sighted, it is because your eyeball has grown too long. This prediction model works,” added Prof Zadnik.

The findings also backed up previous research that found children who spent more time outdoors were less likely to be shortsighted, although do not know what is causing a protective effect.
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link

Wired UK 2018 said:
Andrew Bastawrous: There’s definitely a myopia epidemic. Many more people are becoming shortsighted than they were a decade ago. The implications of this are not just that there are more people needing glasses, but that their condition is pathological. Their myopia is due to the eyeball growing, particularly in populations of Asian descent, at a rate that is causing even potential severe visual impairment, through glaucoma retinal detachment and another retinal problems.

The growth of the eye tends to slow down in your late teens and stop. But what's happening in these population is that it isn't stopping. It seems to continue, and it's being seen all over the world but much more so in Asia. In some countries such as Singapore, more than 90 per cent of school children are leaving school myopic.

The initial theory for this is that people are doing more near-plane reading activity with smartphones which is encouraging the eye to become myopic to meet that environmental need. There’s also evidence that suggests this is happening too quickly for it to be purely an environmental or genetic response. More recent data suggests a more important factor has been that we spend less time outdoors than we used to.

In areas where myopia is becoming most serious, we see a correlation, but not necessarily association, with the amount of education children are having. And given that most of that education takes hold indoors, people are not getting the same UV light exposure, which seems to be the most likely predictive factor for becoming very shortsighted.

So spending time looking at near targets like smartphones may be contributing but that also means that children are not spending time outside, playing outdoors and kicking a football around, which is having a knock-on effect of not looking out into infinity very often. Many people no longer spend time looking at the stars and the mountains, they're looking at screens more often instead.

What can be done to mitigate this?

Organisations have tried to encourage people to be outdoors but there are other priorities that have a great influence, particularly in Asian countries where there are high expectations on educational performance. And so, even if the schools try to have the kids spend less time in the classrooms, the parents will push back against it because they want them to get top grades.

There have also been policy recommendations from the American Academy of Opthamologists about reducing screen time at a very young age because the evidence points to a detrimental cognitive and visual effect. But the reality is that people are consuming that information through the very devices they're being told to spend less time with and they may not know about that information unless they are using those devices.
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What is clear, though, is that the Chinese government has vastly higher priorities, objectively, for protecting its citizens' health. How about the epic-level pollution of air, water, soil, and food?
 
So funny ......

I would absolutely hate to live in China.

Is this for Adults as well?
 
Madoc said:
China only wants to prevent children from going blind. What a swell bunch of guys they are...
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Gotta make sure they raise healthy slaves for better productivity and make up for the ones killing themselves.
 
Like most regulations coming out of Beijing, these will amount to pretty much nothing.
 
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